Moving beyond
Christ, is continuing to recognize the effect he has had on our lives,
the foundation he has given us. Moving beyond Christ is the way we honor
him and the importance he has had in our lives. Moving beyond Christ
means ceasing to look to him for specific answers, like the primary
school child doing homework, and instead looking to him for the
principles we use to find those answers for ourselves. It means, instead
of asking "What would Jesus do?" we should be asking, "What have I
learned from Jesus that will help me in resolving this issue?"

The Confessions of One Trying Desperately to Maintain His Christian Principals in Spite of Personal Adversity

Recently,
someone did some damage to some of my property, causing me a small amount
of emotional pain. The damage was minor. However, my reaction was
major, far more than warranted, in my eyes. In fact, my reaction was so
severe, it threatened the very core of my self concept and caused me to
severely doubt the reality of my belief structure.

While I stood at the till
in the convenience store where I work, I watched as a semi-regular
customer pulled into the parking lot at high speed. He turned into a
parking space and continued on through that parking space banging the
front of his vehicle into the wall of the building with such force that
he knocked the two liter bottles off the rack on the other side of that
wall. Then he threw the transmission into reverse and backed, again at
high speed, on into the right rear of my pick-up, shoving it around so
that the left rear was smashed up against one of the legs of the gas
price sign. Next, he continued on through where my pickup had been and
into a parking lot light post, knocking the air and water hoses off of
that post. While he was recovering from doing the damage to my pickup
and the lamp post, I did manage to excuse myself and get out to obtain
his license plate number, In case he decided to "hit and run."
After causing all that damage, as I still watched him, he managed to gain
control of his vehicle and parked it. Then he came into the store and
attempted to purchase two six-packs of a flavored malt beverage.

When this man arrived at
the till with his two six-packs I asked him if he was the one who just
ran into my pick-up. "Oh, I don't know if I hit any
pick-up," he told me. Other customers assured him that he did hit
my pick-up and that is how he received so much damage to his vehicle. He
acted dumb-founded, as if he wasn't even aware that he had damaged
his own vehicle.

I refused to sell him the
alcohol and told him that I wanted his driver's license and proof of
insurance. He gave me his driver's license, which I laid aside, and
went out to find proof of insurance. Then I called the police. By the
time he returned the police already arrived. I surrendered his
driver's license, my driver's license and insurance card, and
went back to work.

I spent the next
forty-five minutes, my navel glued to the till drawer, waiting on the
customers and wondering how bad the damage to my truck was, expecting the
worst.

The convenience store I
work at is a neighborhood store. Most of the neighbors consider the
cashiers to be a part of the neighborhood. When they saw my truck get
hit, they rushed over to gawk at the damage, to give me their
condolences, and while they were there, to conduct some business. I
don't know how many times I heard, "Sorry about your truck,
Uthur, and while I'm here, give me some Camel Menthols, would
you."

I didn't want their
condolences. I didn't want their business. I wanted to get out and
see if I would be able to drive home after work.

The police sat the man
down on the walkway in front of the entrance to the store, which is just
in front of the till. Every time I looked out the glass doors and saw
the back of his head, I found my anger increasing. Every time I stumbled
over the two six-packs of flavored malt beverage he had tried to buy,
without even realizing what he had done, I found my anger increasing.
Every time I looked out and saw my pick-up, smashed against the leg of
the gas price sign, the large dent in the right rear fender, obscene in
its obviousness, the tail-gate sticking out at an unnatural angle and
contorted, the glass on the ground by the left rear, looking like the
glass from my pick-up's tail light lens, I again found my anger
increasing.

Finally, a full
forty-five minutes after all this happened, I got enough of a break to go
outside. I asked the police to move him because when I looked at him I
just found reason to get even more angry with him. Instead of compassion
or at least an attempt at understanding, I was lectured on how I had to
control my anger and let the police conduct their business. They had an
expert on dealing with people who drove while under the influence
handling the case and he was in charge, not me.

I thought I was doing an
excellent job of controlling my anger, considering the circumstances, and
took extreme offense at the lecture I received.

I was mad, and I believed
justifiably so. This man, in addition to the damage he had done to my
employer's property, had demolished my pick-up, my only means of
transportation to and from work. This was the truck I was using to haul
materials and refuse as I worked on a major remodel to the house. This
was the pickup truck I had owned for five days and then had to rebuild
the motor. Yet, this man was so oblivious to what he was doing that he
didn't even know if he had hit it, so oblivious to what he was doing
that he attempted to purchase alcohol without even mentioning, let alone
apologizing for what he had done, and apparently so oblivious to what he
was doing that he didn't even realize that he had cause his own
vehicle thousands of dollars worth of damage. I thought I had dealt with
him in a cool, calm and yes, even professional manner. I thought that
asking the police to move him was a legitimate attempt to continue to
maintain the excellent control of my anger, a control I believed I had
demonstrated up to that point. For all this, I received a lecture on
anger management.

As I stewed over that
lecture I began to realize why it hurt so. I did have anger to manage.
Yes, I was managing it very well, but it was there. I did indeed have a
desire for revenge, an extreme desire to see this man hurt for the pain
and suffering he had caused me. I was unable to forgive him.

I am a Christian. I do
not advertise that fact. I find that when people learn of my faith
perspective they assume that I am like all those who limit the faith to
the trivial concern of "salvation" from the consequences of
their wrongs so that they can avoid an "eternity in hell." My
faith goes far beyond that. If there were any other term I could use to
describe it that would both acknowledge how central the person of Christ
is to this faith and how unique it is from the "born again"
mentality, I would use that term instead.

At the center of my
belief structure is a concept of justice which I have come to call
creative justice. It started with the assumption that the creator endows
each and every single human with a purpose and with the potential to
achieve that purpose. This purpose, in some either great or minuscule
manner, improves the human condition, that is makes it easier for others
to both realize and achieve their own God endowed purpose. For me,
justice, that is creative justice or God's justice, approaches
reality the more a person is able to achieve his or her own potential and
the closer that person is allowed to fulfill that creative or God given
purpose. It is the way I make sense out of both the life and the cross
of Christ.
All the rest of my beliefs are based on this central concept
of justice. Redemption is being placed back on the right track to
achieving this justice in one's own life. Evil is anything which
would inhibit a person or a group of people as they strive for this goal
of justice. Sin is that which you or I do which either limits our own
ability to achieve this creative justice, or limits the ability of
another in that same goal. And, forgiveness is so necessary, so
important to this goal of creative justice that forgiveness is a very
important part of my definition for creative justice.

When I found myself
unable to forgive the man who had damaged my truck, I found that I was
unable to live by the dictates of my own belief. The concept of
hypocrite came into my mind. My self-image was shattered. My life
became a farce. I was totally devastated.

I have intellectual
reasons to forgive. I do not believe that people, or any one person, is
innately evil. The word "reprobate" is not a part of my
theological vocabulary. Instead, I believe that each and every person
does the best he or she is able to do in any given situation. If that
choice is what I would call evil, that choice is explained by factors or
circumstances which limit the range of choices, or color those available
choices so that the one made is the best that person can do at that time.
This does not justify evil or sin. Instead, this explains it. But,
this also allows us to understand how we can overcome evil. If we can
expand the range of choices a person has available to them, we can
increase the possibility that he or she will choose one which does not
result in sin or evil.

I also believe that many
times a person makes the wrong choice because he or she is unable to
understand the consequences of his or her behavior. We do not often
realize the pain and suffering our actions will cause another. In our
society, quite often we are protected from that realization. If we did,
our choices would be colored differently, increasing the chance that a
choice which hurt the least amount possible would be made.

People who
are incarcerated for their crimes are told that they have paid their debt
to society, but are very rarely held accountable for, or even told of the
debt they owe to those they hurt in the process of committing those
crimes. I am convinced that if we truly knew how our behavior affected
those around us, our choices would demonstrate a far greater concern or
compassion for others. However, there are times when paying the debt to
those we hurt would constitute "cruel and unusual punishment."
This is when forgiveness becomes even more necessary.

Forgiveness is not just
the means by which I avoid standing in the way of another as he or she
strives to reach his or her potential and achieve his or her creative
purpose. As a Christian, this is the minimum I need to be able to do in
order to avoid becoming a stumbling block to those who have hurt me. In
addition, if I am involved in the life of a person who has committed a
sin and is trying to overcome that sin, forgiveness is the first step I
need to make in order to help that person achieve redemption, to get back
on the right track to realizing his or her potential and achieving his or
her created purpose.

Yet, in spite of my
intellectual understanding, I was unable to forgive the man who damaged
my truck.

When I tried to express
my pain, I found most people totally incapable of relating. They were
unable to see beyond my truck and into my heart.

"Of course you
have the right to be angry, Uthur, look at what that man did to your
truck," they said, trying to console me.

By this time, my pain had
moved beyond my truck Up until now, I had been proud of how my faith had
moved far beyond that born-again experience back in June of 1971. Now,
that evolution of my faith served to isolate me further from those who
professed the same faith, which increased my pain.

That first night after my
truck was hurt, the only person who seemed capable of understanding was
my daughter. (My wife was unavailable to me because we work conflicting
shifts and do not see each other during the week. In addition, she
planed a trip back home the following day, and I couldn't ask her to
cancel the trip because of something as trivial as my truck.) Our
daughter recently moved back in with us, with her own daughter, because
of some financial difficulties. I don't know how well she
understood, or even agreed with me...but she did listen without
criticizing, condemning, or consoling inappropriately. She agreed that I
needed to forgive, which was very helpful, and suggested that maybe all I
needed was time, to get over the initial pain, before I could
forgive.

The next day I was able
to relate to a woman who had recently watched a documentary on Jeffery
Dahlmer, the cannibal from Chicago. After watching this documentary and
understanding how so many factors went into the make up of that man, she
saw the punishment of him as a travesty of justice. From this, she was
able to understand why I needed to be able to forgive, and then why the
fact that I could not forgive cause me so much pain.

These two women, my
daughter and the old woman who was a regular at the store, were angels to
me, messengers sent by God. They did a lot to help me overcome my pain
by understanding it, the cause of it, and by not trying to talk me out of
it. Another message from God came in an episode of an old program which
I enjoyed and watched almost religiously about fifteen years ago.

I took that Friday off,
two days after my truck had been hurt, primarily to wallow in my pain as
a means of getting over it. That evening I watched an episode of Star
Trek: The Next Generation. In this episode, the Enterprise stumbled
upon a planet which had been destroyed by a nuclear holocaust yet
contained a patch which was free from that destruction and supported two
humans. In the course of the story it was discovered that the man was
actually a powerful, non-human being, pretending to be human. As the
planet was attacked he refused to defend it. Yet, when his wife, a real
human, was killed in the process of the attack, he retaliated by
committing genocide, by destroying the entire species of those who
attacked his home and killed his wife. Then, he returned to the planet,
restored a patch so that it provided a habitual place to live, brought
his wife back to life, and continued in peace and contentment.

The parallels between
that story and my own situation did not hit me until a few days later.
This being had the power to restore all that had been taken away from
him. I have the power to restore my truck, perhaps not as easily, but it
is there. If the writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation could
conceive of a being with this kind of power who gave into the desire for
revenge, my own inability to forgive was understandable. On this basis,
I could forgive myself and then work on what caused me to commit this
sin.

On Sunday morning I got
out and took a good look at my truck, primarily to get it ready for the
road again. (The regulars were still expressing their concern and I
needed to give them proof that my truck had not been totally destroyed.)
The taillight lens was intact and the lights worked. The tailgate was
bent beyond repair, and the back of the bed was warped just enough so
that I couldn't put another tail gate in its place. However, scrap
plywood from the house remodel could easily serve as a substitute
tail-gate when I needed to haul something. The dent in the right rear
was a blemish that did not effect the operation of the truck. It made it
so that I would have to replace the bed of the truck if I wanted to
restore it, not just have some body work done. That will be easy enough
to do. In the course of driving around since I purchased the truck I
have seen several of the same make and model which are not operating. I
might be able to purchase the bed from one of them. The color might not
match, but that is what paint jobs are for. Perhaps I might also find
some other things that need replacing in my truck, such as the inside
door handle which wore out shortly after I purchased the truck and the
window handle I lost while trying to determine how to repair the door
handle.

In the process, I
realized how much I had become attached to my truck. It is, after all,
only an object, a piece of material property. It will be restored fairly
easily, should I continue to desire to restore it. It was not important
enough to prevent me from forgiving the person who damaged it. Here is a
problem of mine that I need to work on, my attachment to material goods.
In discovering this, I began to realize how this attachment to material
objects affected my relationship with others.

Then, information began
to come in. The man was arrested for driving under the influence of
prescription pain killers. From what I had seen of him before, I can
believe that he is disabled, on prescription pain killers, living a life
of bare existence. On occasion he might be like another of my regulars,
in so much pain that even the prescription won't subdue it. On those
occasions the regular, and perhaps the man who hurt my truck, uses
alcohol to supplement the prescription. This information doesn't
justify what he did. It explains it. It is enough so that I can muster
compassion and, on the basis of that compassion, forgive him. If my
assumptions, based on my knowledge of another and the scanty information
I have about him, are true, the pain severely limited his choices and
perhaps an accidental overdoes of pain medication impaired his ability to
properly operate his vehicle.

This confirmed my belief
structure.

Paul once said that all
things work together for the good of those who love Jesus and are called
according to his purpose. It certainly seems to be true in this case.
My pain had caused me to examine my own life, to identify and recognize
some of my problem areas. It has taught me how to forgive myself when I
am not able to measure up to a standard I have set for myself. In
addition, what at first seemed to be an attack on my core beliefs has
served to confirm those beliefs. I will become a better and stronger
Christian because of it. Maybe it is only a matter of perspective, but I
do believe that I can see the hand of God working out his purpose through
this unfortunate accident.